After a short hiatus from driving, I returned to the mean streets of McLean, Va. last week. Once again, our teacher was Jason. Just so you know, Jason is a very determined guy. He’s so determined that when his vegetable garden failed to thrive, he simply portioned off another area of his backyard and plunged fake vegetables into the ground. With persistence like that, he’s the perfect teacher for Sadie and me.

Our mission was parking, parallel and otherwise. It was by far our most cerebral lesson so far. “Visualization is everything,” Jason said as he told us to picture two garbage cans as parked cars. We took turns sliding into the space.

Sadie drove fluidly but skimmed the trash can more than once. I skirted the trash can, but my movements were too jerky. After the lesson, I returned home exhausted. There’s a reason people learn to do this in their teens. It takes serious energy and I, a wizened 26-year-old, simply don’t have it.

Not that I’m giving up, of course. I know this is important. In fact, I think this whole process could be revealing.

In her new book, Learning to Drive, 52-year-old Nation columnist Katha Pollitt dissects her attempts to master the road. Observation is her Achilles heel, she says, because her mind never ceases to wander. A red light prompts a meditation on modernity—and that leads swiftly to ruminations about a recent breakup.

I have a similar problem. I think too much. I think about the poetry of the sentence “Objects in the mirror are closer than they appear,” and question the logic of pedal placement. Before long, I find myself confused, lost in a web of my own making.

I’m working on it, though, and I hope driving will make me more focused, competent. Then again, if it simply gets me from Point A to Point B, I’ll be happy.

Driving Lesson 4
Destination: McLean
Weather Conditions: Sunny
Lessons Learned: Driving takes imagination, but not too much.
Sadie: B
Jessica: B+

Cynthia Pratt guesses at least 200 cars had to be moved from two blocks of Hobart Street NW in Mount Pleasant for tree trimming early this month. But as usual, some residents disregarded the no-parking signs. In the past, parking scofflaws were ticketed, and trimmers worked around the cars, says Pratt, who has lived on the street for more than 30 years. Not this time.

When the trimmers arrived, they saw the cars and left without starting their saws, Pratt says. But not before calling parking enforcement, which doled out $50 parking tickets. “They didn’t even try to do any work,” says Pratt, whose husband had taken their Toyota to work. “They could have done so much, but they just didn’t.”

When Pratt called the Urban Forestry Administration, she was told the contractor didn’t trim the trees because the contract said he had to cut them all at once. “We talked for a long time about what’s practical in the city,” Pratt says.

Erik Linden, a spokesman for District Department of Transportation, says the agency is looking into what happened on Hobart Street. “It appears that the job was not done, but that we were not necessarily informed that the job was not done,” Linden says, adding that DDOT sent the contactor a letter of warning.

Linden says the trimmers will be back to Hobart Street. Pratt hopes it will be soon. During winter storms, she says, falling branches from the 60-foot oaks will “make a mess out of somebody’s car.”

Today, the Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs announced in a press release that the notorious Youngin’s Towing is no longer in business.

The company’s appeal to the city’s Office of Administrative Hearings failed today, and Youngin’s is now barred from “operating a towing business or a towing storage facility.”

Anyone who has their car currently impounded at Youngin’s Montana Avenue NE lot are “asked to make arrangements to retrieve their cars immediately,” according to the release.

The ballad of Youngin’s should be intimately familiar to readers of City Paper and City Desk. Owner James W. Gee has attracted numerous lawsuits alleging abusive behavior, illegally impounding vehicles, and, in one case, illegally scrapping a vehicle. The city’s on his ass because he failed to notify DPW that he’d made tows and refused to take anything but cash from towees trying to get their cars back.

And make no mistake that Youngin’s was still in business before today: Last Friday evening, I was riding down Rhode Island Avenue NE when a slick Youngin’s tow truck pulled beside me, car on its hook.

Full press release after the jump.

Illustration by Emily Flake

Read the rest of this entry »

The mother of the 18-year-old Bowie State University student who went missing for eight days in September after crashing his car down a ravine in Beltsville says her son is still recovering in a Washington hospital.

Although Julian McCormick’s injuries at first seemed minor, Peggy McCormick says her son has “extensive tissue damage” caused by hanging from his seatbelt inside his wrecked Honda Civic. “It saved his life, but it done a lot of damage to him also,” she says.

Julian McCormick disappeared Sept. 1 and was found Sept. 8 on the side of the road by a motorist after freeing himself from the wreck. McCormick’s mother says she believes he spent the entire eight days at the bottom of the ravine where he told her he caught fish in a creek with his shoe. She says he was unconscious through much of the ordeal, which took place less than a mile from his family’s home.

Peggy McCormick says her son has undergone several surgeries, and she is unsure when he will be released.

The scene this morning at 17th and Q Streets NW, right in front of Trio and Hank’s Oyster Bar: Cameras, captain chairs, guys dressed in black, actors, cool-looking people, onlookers, the whole nine yards. Hey, I thought, perhaps they’re getting a head start on State of Play, that thriller in which Pitt plays an investigative reporter. That had to be it. I’d read that the filming was to start in November, but you know Hollywood: Gotta hustle these products out the door! Surely they were there to film some scene in which Pitt was meeting a killer source for an exchange of documents in those cool Trio bathrooms.

A little investigation of my own turned up no Pitt or other Hollywood types. These people were filming a commercial for the Chevy Tahoe. I overheard a director telling some guy in a big, black, shiny Tahoe, “Yeah, just pull out here.” Or something like that.

Cops had shut off traffic to Q Street for the occasion. Which raises the question: Should anyone in this town be inconvenienced for the sake of the Chevy Tahoe?

The other weekend, Jessica Gould went camping in lieu of driving, and she left me all alone with a new instructor: my boyfriend, Tim.

I wanted to put Tim at ease, to make him feel like he was not going to meet a low-speed demise in a Zipcar named “Yuletide.” So I projected an easy confidence as I took the wheel.

“Press down on the brake pedal and take the parking brake off,” said Tim. Easy enough, I thought, but which one is the brake again? I flashed back to Lesson #1, when Jessica mused on pedal placement.

“It makes sense that the brake pedal is bigger than the gas,” she said. Or was it the other way around? I decided to guess, and I guessed wrong. A look of panic flashed in my instructor’s eyes as Yuletide’s engine revved.

To Tim’s credit, he didn’t take my keys away, and we went on to drift around Wheaton. This particular neighborhood had many dead ends, which gave me opportunity to perfect my three-point turn. Less accommodating to driving lessons was this one narrow street with a very large boat parked right behind a father washing a car with his young daughter, who had a glint in her eyes like she was just itching to dart out in front of me.

Yes, I could see eye glints. I took this particular obstacle course at about 2 miles per hour.

I also had trouble with the many four-way stops in this particular community. I prefer to let everyone go first, including vehicles that got to the intersection just a little after me as well as those still five or six blocks away. “Don’t confuse other drivers,” said Tim, who waved on several cars while I was paralyzed with indecision.

On the way home, we drove under the Beltway. I could see cars zipping along at speeds that would make me catatonic. On that congested interstate, one poor decision would seem all too easily to lead to human tragedy on a massive scale.

“Someday, you’ll drive on that,” Tim said.

Next time: Jessica and I learn the importance of imagination.

DRIVING LESSON 3

Destination: Wheaton
Weather Conditions: Unseasonably warm
Lessons Learned: Don’t confuse other drivers.
Sadie: B.
Jessica: Truant

This week, Jessica Gould and I took to the mean streets of—well, of a high school parking lot, where we drove in circles. This may seem like a step down from our conquering of McLean last week, but parking lots are trickier than they sound. For one thing, a father-and-son duo kept tailgating us. They circled the lot, stopped for a 10-minute chat, then did it again. That looked pretty boring to us, but it was a safari adventure compared to the father-and-daughter team who did nothing but sit in a parking space and watch us go around and around.

I have not driven in a high school lot since I “passed” my driving exam ten years ago. There were several elements to the test: a three point turn, the dreaded parallel parking, driving on an actual street, etc. I only completed one—the “quick stop”—before my instructor mistakenly signed me off on the entire test. This was a lucky break for me, if not for Florida’s pedestrians, because I had only driven once before. An entire summer of drivers ed, and I completely avoided driving—opting to stay inside and watch the scary crash videos instead.

Since then, I have scammed friends and relatives into driving me everywhere I wanted to go. Now, I am scamming them into letting me behind the wheel.

This week’s teacher was Beth, who loosed us on the streets of Upper Northwest after our parking-lot antics made her sufficiently dizzy. There, I learned that you should accelerate through curves, because that gives you more control. Drawing upon last week’s lesson, I also made sure to wave to neighbors. But unlike the friendly Virginians, it turns out that D.C. residents don’t wave back. Instead, they avert their eyes—as if they expect us to roll down the window and ask for spare change.

Additionally, we learned that you don’t have to brake for woodland creatures such as birds. “They get out of your way,” said Beth. “Well, not that one,” she added, as Jessica rolled over a previously-flattened squirrel.

Next week: Jessica spends some time communing with nature while I tackle Mount Pleasant in a Zipcar.

DRIVING LESSON 2
Destination: Upper Northwest
Weather Conditions: Sunny
Lessons Learned: Re-running over roadkill is A-OK.
Sadie: B+. Overcame fear of high schools.
Jessica: B+. Overcame fear of side-mounted car mirrors.

Today is Car-Free Day in the District of Columbia, which provided city politicos a chance to prove their ecocredentials during this morning’s commute.

Ward 6 Councilmember Tommy Wells, who masterminded the holiday, rode his bike to work, as did City Administrator Dan Tangherlini. Council Chairman Vincent Gray and Ward 2 Councilmember Jack Evans took Metro. But several other councilmembers chose less purist modes of transport.

At-Large Councilmember Carol Schwartz, for instance, says she was picked up and driven by a staffer to a morning appointment. She cited a rather bulky briefcase for the chauffeur treatment. She did, after the appointment, walk the remainder of the trip to the John A. Wilson Building. Her trademark Jaguar remained parked at home, she says.

The biggest splash came from At-Large Councilmember Kwame Brown, who arrived with Wells atop a police-issue Segway he rode all the way from his Hillcrest home. LL suggested to Wells that the Segway was cheating, seeing as it has a motor that has to be charged off the electric grid. Gotta watch that carbon footprint, Kwame!

Wells defended Brown’s choice of wheels, calling them “in the spirit of the day.” Brown said his conveyance was inspired by a sense of empathy: “I wanted to see what it was like for the disabled.”

Ward 7 Councilmember Yvette Alexander chose not to eschew internal combustion for her commute: She showed up on a sharp purple Vespa Granturismo scooter. In her defense, she did manage to scooterpool: Friend and Hillcrest resident Darryl D. Rose piloted the petite vessel to the Wilson Building while Alexander held on behind.

“I drive a Land Rover,” she says. “I had to wean myself off.”

And it seems that Car-Free Day might turn out to be Car-Free Morning for the D.C. Council. At the Council’s pre-session breakfast meeting, discussions turned to transportation down to the Capitol for today’s Senate vote on District congressional representation. Gray offered use of his official car and a van to ferry councilmembers the 13-and-a-half blocks down Pennsylvania Avenue NW for the vote.

A decade ago, I climbed into my father’s car and hit the road. Like generations of fathers and daughters before us, we started slowly, circling empty parking lots and driving carefully around cul-de-sacs. We drove almost every Sunday, blasting Blondie as we tooled around Northern New Jersey.

When I turned 17, I got my license and immediately hit the highway. A week later, I hit a concrete divider. It wasn’t a terrible accident, but when I punctured the oil tank, all my confidence leaked out. I never drove again.

Until last weekend. Fellow City Paper contributor Sadie Dingfelder and I decided to face our fears and learn to drive. We tell ourselves we’re doing it for feminism and for freedom. We’re also doing it to save face. After all, there’s nothing more embarrassing than hitching a ride with the people you once babysat.

Last Sunday, our friend Jason offered us his car and his wisdom. He taught us turn signals and driving etiquette (always wave to the neighbors, he says).

Sadie did great. The stop and go was a bit bumpy, but by the end of the lesson she was sailing along. Mine was a bit more…eventful. Just as I was praised for my driverly skills, I nicked a parked car’s mirror. Visions of Cher Horowitz danced through my head. Still, we’re determined to keep going. Stay tuned.

Driving Lesson 1
Destination: McLean
Weather Conditions: Sunny
Lessons Learned: Gas to the right, brake to the left. Always wave to neighbors.
Sadie: B-. No collisions—but failed to be friendly.
Jessica: C+. Hit another car—but did remember to wave to the neighbors.

Thanks go out to that very helpful jaywalk cop writing tickets at 18th and Columbia for his succinct take on the paradox in which he participated this morning. The city who sent him to write the tickets, you know, to protect pedestrians from themselves, murderous buses, and other vehicles, is the same city that regularly grants permits that close sidewalks, sending pedestrians into the street to take their chances.

Just off the intersection policed by Mr. Jaywalk Enforcer, work crews for more than a week have taped off the sidewalk in front of the soon-to-be a FedEx-Kinko’s (formerly Miss Pixies and DaDa) at 1814 Adams Mill Road. Not only is the sidewalk off limits, the entire righthand lane is closed off, too, sending walkers into the middle of the street on a blind curve as they approach the light at 18th and Columbia.

I stopped the cop this morning to ask him if a permit would actually be granted for such a dangerous situation. “Sure,” he said. “That’s the city for ya!”

Although not an original beef, it remains unclear to me why the hell D.C. can’t figure out how to require contractors to build scaffolding and keep sidewalks open. If the cluster that is the New York City government can get that passed, it seems the cluster that is D.C. should at least give it a shot.

There are plenty of other examples of this dangerous practice. Think P Street. Think the National Cathedral, where work closed a normally busy Wisconsin Avenue sidewalk for MORE THAN A YEAR. That’s ridiculous. Discuss.

A poster to Yahoo’s TakomaDC group generated some traffic yesterday when she asked people how they get old DMV registration stickers off their windshields. “Is it just a matter of huge quantities of patience with a utility knife?” she wondered. “These things are a bear!”

Another poster forwarded the following tip, which someone else had sent her a few years back when she’d faced the same problem:

I have had some success with this method. I use a product called Goo Gone (you can get it at CVS or a supermarket). It’s an oily liquid that smells like citrus. I make a pad out of a couple of paper towels and saturate it with the stuff. Then I squirt a lot of the liquid on the sticker itself. I tape the pad to the sticker, so the sticker is soaking in the stuff. I leave it overnight, then leave the car in the sun for about an hour so the sticker warms up. You still have to scrape, but at least it comes off.

I think the DC DMV needs to consult with NASA. If they used the same glue on the tiles on the space shuttle, they wouldn’t have any problems. It’s almost indestructable.

That didn’t keep more advice from pouring in yesterday. Try outsourcing, suggests another poster:

I normally go to a gas station where they have great scrapers for taking off such stickers. It usually takes one of the mechanics less than 2 minutes to get the entire sticker off - I tip them a few bucks and I’m on my way!

Recommends another poster:

You can also try rubber cement thinner. The major brand name is “Bestine” and can be found in any art or arts & crafts store. Essentially you soak the sticker in Bestine and then scape it off. The process takes several minutes, versus the overnight soaking with Goo Be Gone.

I don’t own a car, so I don’t get what the big deal is. Can any drivers out there shed light on this? Just how stubborn are those stickers?

Commuters beware: Your northbound launching pad is in peril.

The District’s Department of Transportation is weighing proposals to turn this four-lane expressway into a sleepy, two-way neighborhoody street. Rerouting would affect the portion of 15th from the intersection of Massachusetts Avenue NW all the way up to Florida Avenue/W Street.

According to DDOT spokesman Erik Linden, the stretch of asphalt in question has “become increasingly residential” in recent years. “The general theory behind converting such a corridor to two-way is to help calm traffic and improve access for residents. Too often our one-way streets downtown become speedways instead of livable city streets. If we move forward, the goal would be to change that.”

And Linden emphasizes that the “if,” in this case, is pretty big. “It’s important to note that no decision has been made - DDOT is studying the feasibility of this option and engaging residents and businesses before moving forward,” writes Linden via e-mail. “We are in the early stages.”

Those early stages have yielded an assortment of proposals for the thoroughfare. In addition to the status quo (one way, four travel lanes, two parking lanes), they include the following:

1) Three northbound lanes, two expanded parking lanes, and a bike lane.

2) Three northbound lanes, two parking lanes, and bike lanes going both ways.

3) Two northbound lanes, one southbound lane, two parking lanes, and bike lanes going both ways.

4) One northbound lane, one southbound lane, one turn lane, two parking lanes, two bike lanes.

Why is DDOT taking a hard look at such a reliable route to the north? Community-building gets us part of the way there. With people repopulating the city, Linden says, “many are requesting a more neighborhood feel to their surroundings, and converting one-way streets to two-way streets is one way to do this.”

Another factor: “Preliminary” DDOT studies suggest that this part of 15th Street is underutilized, a suggestion that seems a bit at odds with the daily rush-hour scene of motorists piled up at lights along the corridor, revving their engines in hopes of beating the next red light up the street.

The city is now gathering input from residents on the plan and has already given a look-see to nearby advisory neighborhood commissions. If a change is made, says Linden, it’ll happen within the next year or two.

It’s not hard to foresee the battle lines on this plan. Anyone who lives in Dupont East/Logan Circle will welcome a break from the raceway that is now 15th. And just about anyone who lives north of U Street–Maryland commuters, sure, but also Mount Pleasanteers and Ward 4 people–will lament the loss of their conduit out of downtown.

DOWNLOAD: Possible configurations of 15th Street (PDF)

If everyone drives to a sold-out game at the new Nationals stadium, the result will be a mess.

That was the unstated message of the Aug. 2 “open house” held to brief D.C. residents on the Traffic Operations and Parking Plan (TOPP) for the stadium, which is scheduled to open for the 2008 baseball season. Representatives of Metro, D.C.’s transportation department, and consulting firm Grove/Slade Associates were on hand to explain the various TOPP maps and graphs. But none of them could say what will happen if most Nats fans drive, or if they ignore the complicated game-days scheme for traffic flow, street closings, color-coded parking sectors, and on-street parking restrictions.

Anyone who perused the maps, or walked the nearby streets, would have noticed that the site of the under-construction stadium is less accessible than RFK, the team’s current home. It’s served by one Metro line rather than two and can be reached by fewer major thoroughfares and bus routes.

At least there are some ideas about remedying the latter problem. The stadium’s opening might spur extensions of the N22 Union Station-Navy Yard shuttle (whose conversion to Circulator service is being considered) and the 7th Street Circulator line. Also possible, in theory, is a game-only express Circulator directly from Union Station to the stadium.

The N22 expansion makes sense, even if its roundabout route to the stadium, via 8th Street SE, might discourage baseball fans from riding. But the express line is dependent on the reopening of 1st Street SE alongside the Library of Congress’ Madison Building, which has been fortified since 9/11. That’s not gonna happen. And the extension of the 7th Street Circulator, which would also offer an indirect approach to Natsland, seems primarily designed to coerce a few more people onto a route that currently attracts almost no passengers. (At the TOPP event, even a Metro representative allowed that ridership on the 7th Street Circ is “light.”)

Possible supplemental transit strategies include a bicycle “valet” to encourage gamegoers to cycle to the stadium and a water taxi to the area. The latter seems a long shot, however, even if four companies have reportedly expressed interest in a 18-month pilot program. After all, a water taxi could only ferry people from other sites that have mediocre transit access and limited parking, like Georgetown and Old Town Alexandria.

The principal revelation of the TOPP event had nothing to do with transportation, however. The open house was held on the unoccupied top floor of 20 M Street SE, which turned out to be a new office building developed by the Lerner family, who also own the Nats. The 10-story building was appointed with baseball-related art, an outdoor video screen that showed stylized images of the game, and an electronic signboard that welcomed attendees in the name of the Lerners. Inside, each person who entered the session was offered a soft-sided mini-cooler branded with the Nats’ logo.

From the 10th floor, there was an unencumbered vista of the stadium but also a view of the new official plan for Washington: Block after block of bland office cubes, with no public structures, few shops or restaurants, and little public space. And those blocks that haven’t been ceded to private developers will be the province of the security-crazed feds. So enjoy that soft-sided mini-cooler, Mr. and Ms. D.C. It’s all you’re getting.

Youngin’s Towing and Auto Body needs permission to sink its hooks into any more cars.

Under a restraining order issued last Thursday in D.C. Superior Court, “Youngin’s shall be prohibited from all towing, except instances where they have an explicit agreement in advance with the owner of the vehicle to be towed.”

While the judge’s order is temporary, it is the city’s first major victory against the renegade tow trucks of James W. Gee. Car owners complain that Gee scraps vehicles after he tows them, charges exorbitant fees, and cusses out customers picking up their cars. After an investigation by the Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs, the city sued him on July 21. If the D.C. Attorney General wins that case, Gee could be shut down for good.

“I think this is an important action by the city on behalf of those who do business,” says DCRA spokesperson Karyn-Siobhan Robinson. “It’s not a quick process, but it is a process with which we are committed.”

Gee didn’t answer repeated phone calls. In a previous interview, he said he abuses car owners because they abuse him first. “They start calling us motherfuckers,” he said, explaining that African-American car owners “don’t know how to conduct business.”

Editor’s Note: Earlier this year, Justin wrote Iceland, a blog about his band’s American tour. Justin isn’t on tour anymore, but Iceland continues, twice a week, on City Desk.

“A red Mustang,” observed the rental-car attendant. The time had come for me to return my rental car. This attendant was all too happy to oblige.

“A red Mustang,” I confirmed. I watched the rental-car attendant punch numbers into a mobile rental-car check-in unit strapped to his belt. “I must admit that I did not request a red Mustang from your rental car agency!” I exclaimed. “Though I requested an economy car, I was given this red Mustang instead and, not wishing to make a scene, accepted it. Yet, I find this red Mustang objectionable. First, this red Mustang is an American car. I do not favor American automobiles. As a youth, my family routinely bought American cars and, as a result, experienced automotive difficulties. When I came of age, I resolved to purchase and drive Toyotas whenever possible. This red Mustang is no Toyota.

The rental-car attendant stared at his keypad and continued to punch information into the device.

“Second,” I continued, “I must object to this red Mustang’s aesthetics. I do not like red cars. Many believe that red cars attract the attention of police officers, and I do not appreciate this attention. In addition, the word ‘Mustang’ is written on this red Mustang in many places. ‘Mustang’ is written across the steering column. ‘Mustang’ is written across the back seats. ‘Mustang’ is written in gigantic letters across the side of the car. Such persistent self-declaration is unnecessary and déclassé. Must this ridiculous car further announce itself?”

The rental-car attendant stared at his keypad and continued to punch information into the device.

“And third,” I concluded, “I have learned that other drivers on the road believe that anyone who behind the wheel of a red Mustang is—to employ a popular, vulgar expression—a ‘douchebag.’ Thus, while parallel parking, I was given the finger by a young punk rock enthusiast behind the wheel of a red Honda that sported a Black Flag bumpersticker. My parallel-parking maneuver was legal and, I may add, perfectly executed. I excel at parallel parking. Still, this young anti-Establishment rogue singled me out for criticism simply because I was driving a red Mustang.”

For the first time, the rental-car attendant’s hands strayed from his keypad. He looked up, stared into my eyes, and spoke. “But, tell me,” he implored. “Was there not one sublime moment where you were at one with this red Mustang? Was there not one instant—when passing a slow-moving car on the highway, or peeling out of a driveway, or rolling up to a party, or cruising through a neighborhood—that you felt at home behind the wheel of this red Mustang and thought perhaps that you had never had and never could have had any other home? Was there not one second where you felt that this red Mustang was the perfect automotive expression of your all-too-human soul?” The rental-car attendant was no longer looking at me, but was staring at some distant, unknown point.

I considered the rental-car attendant’s vision of man-as-machine. “Perhaps,” I admitted. The rental-car attendant did not respond. “The gas mileage was also better than expected,” I added.